Silver Fox
by distrahere
Summary: Mrs Hudson's granddaughter turns up at 221 Baker Street with a mystery for Sherlock and John to solve. MULTICHAPTER Based on the story "Silver Blaze" by Conan Doyle himself.
1. Chapter 1

**All credit goes jointly to Arthur Conan Doyle and the team at the BBC. The story is based on "Silver Blaze", one of the stories in "Sherlock Holmes" written by Conan Doyle himself (of course). I hope you like it, please review I would love to know what you think. E xx**

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><p>The girl was slight, maybe a size 8, but tall, nearly 6ft in her boots. Her black hair was highlighted pink and tied into a loose ponytail. She had multiple ear piercings, a nose ring, a single eyebrow stud and a tongue stud. She was chewing a spearmint flavored gum. She stood with her hands in her jeans pockets. She had dirt in her nails and probably owned a large dog. All this Sherlock observed in the 3.86 seconds it took for Mrs Hudson to drop what she was doing and embrace the girl. 'Arabella, what a surprise.'<p>

The girl rolled her eyes and stepped out of her grandmother's embrace. 'It's Bella Grandma, remember that conversation.' Sherlock could detect a slight devonshire accent.

Mrs Hudson nodded. 'Yes, Yes dear. Are you staying for tea?' She looked her granddaughter up and down. 'You need feeding up, I thought those country folk believed in proper meals.'

Arabella shrugged. 'I wouldn't know. And I'm here to see them.' She looked over Mrs Hudson's shoulder at John and Sherlock who where sitting on the sofa. Arabella commented. "I imagined you both as taller."

Sherlock sat fiddling with a stack of post-it notes. John was making notes on a laptop. "What exactly happened? Start from the beginning, don't miss anything out. And don't be boring."

Arabella sipped at the coffee that Mrs Hudson had made her and made a face. She placed it down on the coffee table. "I work. Worked as a groom for a racing stud. We, that's me and Head Trainer Mark Thompson, were taking Silver Fox, he's the favorite for the Grand National, across Dartmoor. He was driving up front. I was in the back with Silver, he's a bit funny about being alone. I must have fallen asleep, when I woke up the truck had stopped and Silver had gone. I found Mark outside, dead." Arabella paused to watch there reaction. Nothing, so she continued with her recollection of events. "Mr Robertson, he owns the yard and Silver Fox, fired me for dereliction of duty. I don't care about the job or even Thompson, I just want to find Fox. He's not a stupid horse, he's gotten loose before and just gone straight home. He's an Iron grey Anglo-Arab with a black muzzle."  
>John spoke. "What are the police doing?"<p>

"Mark was found with a kitchen-knife, and a stock tie."

"Stock tie?"

"Belonging to James Red They arrested him. He said he lent it to Mark. They released him because he had a solid alibi."  
>Sherlock spoke this time. "Anything else?"<br>"Mr Robertson bet £100 that Silver Fox wouldn't win the national."

Sherlock narrowed his eyes. "How do you know that?"  
>"I went to the local library, used a fake library card, used their computers to hack into the computer system at the local bet-shop and printed out the list of people with bets against Silver Fox at the National. Mr Robertson was at the top."<p>

John frowned. "How did the police not pick up on it?"

"He used a fake name, all the owners do. Just I happen to know it because he sometimes get's me to place bets for him."

Sherlock sat back. "So why do you need us?"

"I'm already a suspect, and I'm also a 16 year old teenager with no qualifications. They'd just arrest me for hacking and I have a motive to blame Robertson. It's not that simple either, Robertson couldn't have done it, he was a Board of Racing meeting and wouldn't have got back in time."

Mrs Hudson looked concerned. "Dear, are you still a suspect? Please don't tell me you've escaped from custody?" Seeing John's incredulous look. "Arabella can be quite determined when she wishes."

"The police let me out, it took them a whole 24 hours to realist that I was unlikely to kill someone and then call the police 3 hours later."

Sherlock nodded. "I'll take the case, but in the morning."

Arabella yawned and nodded. She had spent 24 hours in a cold police cell, then 5 hours searching for Silver on the moor, 2 hours at the local library and then spent the rest of the day hitchhiking up to London. Mrs Hudson offered her the spare room for the night, which Arabella gratefully accepted. She fell asleep almost immediately.


	2. Chapter 2

Sherlock, John and Arabella were sitting in silence on the platform of Waterloo station. They had got stuck in traffic, as Sherlock had predicted, and missed their train, which Sherlock hadn't predicted. Arabella paused in chewing her gum. "How did you know there would be an accident?"

Sherlock answered immediately. "Probability, the proxi-"

John rolled his eyes. "Shut up Sherlock, I'm trying pretend I'm back in bed." It was 6:32. The next train down to Exeter was at 7:32.

Sherlock produced a Cigarette and wordlessly offered her one.

She took one gratefully. Grandma Hudson didn't think she smoked and Arabella intended to keep it that way. "Don't tell Grandma."

John opened his eyes again. "Why not?"

Sherlock answered for her. "Because Mrs Hudson is under the impression that her granddaughter is still a little girl called Arabella, and Bella wants to keep in her grandmother's good books, demonstrated by the fact that you are wearing clothes that you haven't worn in a year, you're not smoking despite the fact that it gives you tremors and makes you grouchy and the fact that you have only insisted that she calls you Bella once, even though it is obvious that you hate being called that. You let her fuss over you and feed you food with dairy products in, even though you are strictly a vegan. Why? Because you don't get your job back then you will need a place to stay and you can't go back to your parents because they disprove of you leaving school early."

Arabella smiled. "You're good. But the reason I can't go back to my parents is they disprove of my career choice, they couldn't give a damn about me leaving school early. But close."

Sherlock shrugged and John asked, "What did they want to you do?"

"Anything but "man's work." My dad's a sexist bigot and my Mum just goes along with whatever he says." Arabella paused, "I get the rest of it, but how the heck did you manage to work out that I am a vegan."

John sighed and Sherlock grinned. "Your shoes, fake leather but still expensive, why would you trouble yourself to find a good quality pair of faux boots when you could pay the same amount, if not less, for a more readily available pair of leather boots for half the price. The slightly purple tinge to your fingers, which suggests a slight calcium deficiency you should probably take supplements if you are going to continue your diet, or eat more orange juice. And the fact that you took your coffee black even though you evidently didn't like the taste as you put an inordinate amount of sugar in it. If you had been cutting out the milk to lose weight, then you would have used sweetener, and frankly you don't need to with all the horse walking and galloping you have been doing. Also, you refused Mrs Hudson's cheesecake, something which you have probably eaten before no?"

Arabella gave a single nod of acknowledgement, mixed with admiration.

Sherlock continued, "And no one refuses Mrs Hudson's cheesecake. But you let her make you an omelette this morning because you didn't want to upset her or make a fuss. Am I right?"

Arabella nodded slowly and looked at John, with almost shock on her face.

John nodded, "Yes, he's for real."

They sat in silence for a while. Arabella pulled out her laptop and began to type.

Sherlock looked at screen. "Computer programming?"

Arabella shrugged. "Just a sideline to pass the time. Hey maybe one day I'll sell them and make millions."

Sherlock studied the page for a second. "You've made a mistake on line 137. Colon instead of a semi-colon."

Arabella scrutinized the line of codex and made the change he had indicated. " How- nevermind. Thanks."

Sherlock looked at her curiously. "Don't get yourself arrested. People get so iffy about hacking these days and privacy laws and copyright protection. And that would really upset your grandmother."

Arabella smiled slightly and John gave Sherlock an odd look. He was being weirdly nice.


End file.
